Aim of Emperor group has published recent statistics and trends on the Russian business aviation market, based on data gathered from the group's two charter brokers LLJets and QuantumVia.

Aiming to bounce back from COVID-19 imposed global lockdowns, the three summer months have seen the demand for charter flights grow by 163% compared to the same period last year, and by 215% compared to 2019.

“COVID-19 has given a strong boost to the demand for private flights,” says Alisher Elmuradov, commercial director at the Aim of Emperor group and co-owner of LLJets charter broker. “On one hand, passengers who flew before the pandemic began to fly more often and rented aircraft for all family members trying to protect them. On the other hand, regular air traffic still has not recovered to historical levels, so there is an influx of completely new passengers who were not familiar with business aviation before the pandemic.”

According to analysts at Aim of Emperor, in the summer of 2021 the share of new users was up 23%. The majority of new customers comprised of customers who were used to flying in premium class commercial aviation, but had no choice but to use chartered aviation solutions as the global pandemic wound on.

Some of the most popular destinations for charter flight passengers over the summer were Thessaloniki, Nice, Pisa and London. Greece in particular proved a popular choice where there were no restrictions for Russian tourists.

Aim of Emperor is a diversified group of companies that is a dealer of HondaJet aircraft in Russia and the CIS.